World’s Subways Converging on Ideal Form

[microrobert]

World’s Subways Converging on Ideal Form




Sample of subway network structures from (clockwise, top left) Shanghai, Madrid, Moscow, Tokyo, Seoul and Barcelona.

After decades of urban evolution, the world’s major subway systems appear to be converging on an ideal form.

On the surface, these core-and-branch systems — evident in New York City, Tokyo, London or most any large metropolitan subway — may seem intuitively optimal. But in the absence of top-down central planning, their movement over decades toward a common mathematical space may hint at universal principles of human self-organization.

World's Subways Converging on Ideal Form | Wired Science | Wired.com

[The Lawspeaker]

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